Key defendant in Pino murder-for-hire case must stay jailed before trial, judge says
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FBI investigating Sergio Pino
FBI agents raided the residence the well-known home builder as part of a investigation into his alleged connection to threats against his wife Tatiana Pino’s life. The pair are in a divorce dispute.
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Fausto Villar and Avery Bivins got to know each other in prison and kept in touch after their release.
They forged a criminal bond last fall, FBI agents say, when Villar’s employer, Miami-Dade real estate tycoon Sergio Pino, asked Villar to handle a very discreet matter: killing his wife, who had filed for divorce and wanted half of his fortune. Villar recruited Bivins to put together a crew for the hit, according to the FBI.
It did not go as planned — neither for Villar, a roofer who was working on his boss’ luxury residence in Cocoplum, nor for Pino, 67, who killed himself on July 16 after FBI agents came to his home to arrest him.
Villar has been charged along with Bivins and seven others in a murder-for-hire conspiracy indictment filed last month in Miami federal court. On Monday, a judge ordered that Villar stay held in a Miami detention center before trial because of his criminal past, a potential eight- to 14-year prison sentence in the new case, and the brandishing of a firearm in the scheme to kill Tatiana Pino, 55, at her home in Pinecrest in June.
Villar was caught on a recorded phone conversation with Bivins on July 15 when Bivins agreed to help federal agents make their case against Villar and Pino, according to the FBI. Afraid of being locked up again, Villar was recorded saying he’s “going dark” ... “zero dark thirty.”
“I’m not going back to prison,” Villar told Bivins, according to a snippet of their recorded conversation quoted in Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman’s detention order.
Villar also told his former prison mate to destroy electronic and social media evidence — “delete, delete, delete” and “delete Instagram,” among other instructions, according to the detention order.
In addition to his “intent to obstruct justice,” Villar, who goes by the nickname “Cuba,” has “ties to several countries around the world,” making him a flight risk, Goodman found.
Overall, the “weight of evidence against the defendant is strong,” he said.
Villar’s lawyer, Saam Zangeneh, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Bivins is also being held before trial, but he’s the main cooperating witness against Villar and the others recruited into the alleged murder-for-hire conspiracy, which means he’s expected to plead guilty and receive a lesser prison sentence than the other defendants. Villar may have been in a similar position to benefit from informing on Pino, but with Pino now dead, the roofer would likely face more time in prison than Bivins even if he pleads guilty.
Bivins’ defense attorney, Humberto Dominguez, declined to comment.
Bivins, 36, served 12 years in state prison on charges related to drug trafficking, theft and attempted murder. Villar, 42, also did six years in prison on charges involving armed robbery.
Bivins scored big points for the FBI when he agreed to record his critical conversation with Villar on their burner cellphones.
“Villar implied to Bivins that he could not get more money from Pino because law enforcement was monitoring Pino,” according to FBI documents summarizing their conversation. Villar also told Bivins to delete his Instagram page, clear his phone logs and get rid of his burner phone.
Also significant, Villar talked about an earlier threat on Pino’s wife in August of last year, when another group of four men was allegedly recruited by the developer to target her. In that instance, a man driving a rented Home Depot flatbed truck rammed backward into Tatiana Pino’s car in her Pinecrest driveway and then sped away. That same group has been charged with threatening her life, as well as committing arson on three vehicles owned by her sister.
In the phone conversation, Villar warned Bivins that federal investigators might connect “the first attempts” on Tatiana Pino’s life with the second attempt outside her home in June, leading to a possible “conspiracy” charge against all of the suspects, according to the FBI documents.
Villar told Bivins “to take care of his people,” implying he needed “to keep them in line” and that they would be rewarded for their loyalty. By then, three other suspects in their crew had already been arrested: Johnson, Green and another associate, Diori Barnard. Their attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Villar said Pino expressed concern about their arrests and that they might be talking to investigators. Villar “instructed Bivins to make sure” the three arrested suspects “did not give [them] up,” suggesting that the second crew instead make the murder-for-hire scheme look like a robbery, the FBI documents say.
Immediately after the July 15 phone conversation, the FBI monitored Pino’s cellphone and found that the developer spoke with Villar for about three minutes and 15 seconds on a WhatsApp call. They also exchanged WhatsApp messages. Agents had a search warrant for cellphone call logs and messages between the men, though they could not listen in on their conversations.
In addition, FBI agents used the same monitoring device, plus toll data, for Villar, Pino and the other suspects, which they say reflected how the group “coordinated their efforts” in the second murder-for-hire scheme.
READ MORE: Tatiana Pino’s life as a target: poisoned at home, followed from church, cars set ablaze
FBI charging documents say that Pino’s alleged plot targeting his wife was active as recently as June 23. On that Sunday morning, Tatiana Pino drove to church and was followed by a man who’d been hired to tail her.
Ten miles away, in Pinecrest, another man was parked in a truck outside her house, waiting for her return from Calvary Church, according to the FBI documents. As Tatiana Pino pulled into her driveway, Vernon Green allegedly exited his truck and ran toward her, brandishing a gun. Pino slammed the horn and floored the gas pedal, roaring into her backyard.
During the commotion, Pino’s adult daughter ran out of the house and was confronted by Green, who pointed his pistol “inches from her face,” grabbed her arm and told her to get back, the documents allege. Pino and her daughter were both able to get away.
After the botched attempt on Tatiana Pino’s life, Green fled in his truck. FBI agents went to her home that Sunday to gather evidence, including security surveillance footage. The following day, agents raided her husband’s home and business, Century Homebuilders Group, in Coral Gables.
For Tatiana Pino, the attack capped a five-year stretch of menacing and terrifying assaults that federal authorities say were orchestrated by her husband, including attempts to poison her, according to the FBI documents. Sergio Pino, a Cuban immigrant who turned a modest plumbing business into a home-building empire, had directed Villar and his crew to kill his wife upon her return from church that Sunday because the couple was facing an imminent trial over their 1992 nuptial agreement and marital assets, investigators say.
The breakthrough in the FBI investigation came on July 12, when agents contacted Bivins, saying they had a federal search warrant for his cellphone and other evidence and wanted to talk with him. Bivins’ lawyer advised him to do so.
FBI agents learned that Bivins knew Villar as “Cuba” and that they got acquainted in state prison. Villar reached out to Bivins in the fall of 2023 about a “wealthy man [Sergio Pino] who contracted him to kill his estranged wife,” according to FBI criminal complaints and affidavits. Villar “enlisted Bivins to gather a group for the job,” which included contacting a friend named Clementa Johnson to execute the hit on Pino’s wife, the documents say. Johnson then brought in his cousin Green, the gunman who allegedly assaulted Tatiana Pino outside her home.
Bivins agreed to the arrangement, according to FBI documents, and he and Villar met multiple times.
According to Villar, Pino’s wife “wanted half of what Pino owned and would not settle for the offered 20 million dollars” in their divorce case, the FBI documents say.
“Pino was willing to pay $150,000 for the murder contract’s completion and there would be an additional $150,000 if the contract was carried out without detection,” according to the documents. “Villar also provided two cash payments of $30,000 and $45,000 up front during two separate meetings.”
Villar also provided syringes, vials and injections for use in the plot targeting Pino’s wife, according to charging documents and a superseding indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Co-conspirator 1 [Sergio Pino] provided the second crew with a financial incentive to ensure the crime was not traced back to him,” according to the indictment, which doesn’t name Pino as a defendant because of his death. “Co-conspirator 1 suggested that the second crew should kill Victim 1 [Tatiana Pino] by injecting her with a provided liquid substance to make her death appear to be a heart attack.”
There are no other details about the alleged injection scheme in the indictment, though a source familiar with the plan said it was abandoned in favor of trying to shoot Tatiana Pino outside her home while making it look like part of an armed robbery.
The indictment also states that the first crew of men in the murder-for-hire scheme planned to poison Tatiana Pino with cyanide and arsenic, in addition to fentanyl. The FBI had previously made a general statement about the planned use of “other drugs” to harm her.
At a July 17 news conference after the FBI’s attempt to arrest Pino at his home, U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said the first crew “actually obtained fentanyl to assist Pino in his effort to kill his wife.”
“Our investigation has shown that the target of the fentanyl poisoning was his wife,“ FBI special agent Jeff Veltri told reporters.
This story was originally published August 13, 2024 at 5:42 PM.
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